We will meet virtually via WebEx; members have received dial-in details by email recently. If you cannot find the message, please login to the website and find the details in the members-only section. In case of issues, please contact the chairperson of the society (see "about us" section).

The Sensometric Society Data Set Repository has gone live! With this repository, we offer access to various sensory data sets, being made available by some members of the society. The data sets can be used freely, e.g. to explore new (and maybe old) idea; if used for other than your purely personal purposes, all you are asked to do is to cite the reference associated with the data set.

While a couple of data sets are available already, we hope that you will consider contributing some of your data to the repository, too. By that, we intend to grow the repository to a very useful resource e.g. for students and others in need of some real data. (It is OK if some of the information in the data set would need to be masked.) At the same time, if use by others, the data sets might trigger additional references to your own work. Contributing is as easy as writing an email to our web administrator.

Thanks to John Castura for pushing this forward, and to Chris Findlay and Per Brockhoff for the first contributions.

during this year's AGM, the terms of four society committee members ended, leading so some changes on the committee. I'd like to thank John Castura, Anne Hasted, Barbara Pfeiffer and Thierry Worch for their great contributions during the past couple of years. While Barbara and Thierry will continue in a different position on the committee, John and Anne will retire from the committee (for now), and I would like to thank both of them again for their invaluable efforts during the last 4 years. This includes (but is not limited to) in particular the website renewal and the extensive automation of the membership application and renewal processes, from which the society will benefit for years to come. Thanks for all your efforts for the society.

I am also very pleased that the following members were elected for a 4-year term on the committee:

Barbara Pfeiffer (vice-chair)

Thierry Worch (treasurer)

Chantal Gilbert (ordinary member)

Gastón Ares (ordinary member)

Thanks to all of them for committing your time and energey to the society.

Please join me in congratulating them on their election and in wishing them a succesful and also enjoyable time on the committee.

The Sensometrics 2014 meeting is history, but many of the ideas that have been presented and discussed during the meeting are only about to start flourish.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who helped making the meeting such a great event, first and foremost the local organizers Tom Carr, Richard Popper and Ruta Lesniauskas and their team, as well as John Castura and his scientific committee.

Yet, a meeting would not be worth anything without the many great oral and poster presentations, or without an engaged audience throughout the discussions.

It would be impossible to name everyone, but thanks to all that that have contributed their share to make this a great and memorable event.

Hereby, I invite you to this year’s annual general meeting of the society, which is scheduled to take place during the Sensometrics conference on Wednesday, July 30, at 6pm local time. I hope that you will join us for this meeting to discuss the path forward of the society. This also includes elections for half of the positions on the committee.

The preliminary agenda is as follows:

Minutes of the previous meeting

Chairman’s report

Treasurer’s report

Tutorials

Sensometrics Workshop @ Pangborn

Sensometrics Meetings

Global Sensory Group

Website

Committee elections

Other topics

Note that for topic 1, to keep the meeting as brief as possible we do not intend to read the minutes, so please take the time prior to the AGM to read them here. Any questions and comments will of course be welcome prior to approval of those minutes.

The program for Sensometrics 2014 is now available online. An international group of researchers will be presenting on a diverse set of topics, including product optimization, multivariate data analysis, and panel performance. Presentations include oral presentations (including three distinguished invited speakers), posters, and two workshops. The conference program is preceded by a day of optional tutorials.

Sensory professionals and statisticians have a significant impact on business decisions, such as product formulation and reformulation, and new products launches. Recommendations must be supportable and evidence-based, while maximizing the insight that can be gained from the research. Careful considerations are necessary to ensure the collection of data efficiently addresses the business problem, and to use that data appropriately to inform the business question at hand. These considerations include careful selection and application of experimental protocols, implementation of sensory best practices, proper statistical treatment of data, knowledgeable interpretation, and impactful communication. This workshop explores some of the real-world challenges that arise when attending to such details.

The workshop is organized into three parts:

1) Design, in which an experiment is planned in a manner that addresses the primary business question, but also in a manner that may address secondary or tertiary questions, so as to maximise value from the data.

2) Analysis, in which valid statistical analyses are conducted, and follow-up analyses performed, looking beyond the obvious and helping to gain new insights.

3) Interpretation & communication, in which conclusions and insights that are supported by the data are communicated in a manner that is honest, clear, impactful and understandable.

The workshop will feature presentations from invited workshop presenters who grapple with these challenges as part of their day-to-day work. Additionally, the workshop will feature a panel discussion with opportunities for question and answer and open participation.

The target audience for this workshop is sensory professionals and sensory statisticians at all levels.

Those of you who recall the data analysis workshop at Sensometrics 2004 will know why we are so pleased to announce a Data Analysis Workshop at the 12th Sensometric Meeting!

The workshop, Temporal Dominance of Sensations and Temporal Liking Data Analysis, is organized by Pascal Schlich and Arnaud Thomas. The data analysis workshop is a great opportunity to use real data to test out some of the statistical approaches that others have proposed in the literature, or to try out a new approach that you have in mind!

Please note that the data set is related to as-of-yet unpublished research. The authors retain rights to first publication. For now the data set will be made available only for personal use or to use for submitting an abstract to the 12th Sensometric Meeting, which can be done on the conference web site. Later, once the research is published (the authors will submit a manuscript to Food Quality and Preference) you will be advised that the condition is lifted, and will be permitted to submit your own original manuscripts based on this data to any journal of your choice.